WorkPlace Leeds

Mental Health Employment Specialist

Information Sheet Key Terms and Conditions of Employment

Post: Mental Health Employment Specialist

Hours: 37 hours per week

Salary Range: £19,621- £21,519

Co Location: Employment Team, De Lacey House, Abbey Road, Kirkstall, Leeds, LS5 3HS and Touchstone Support Centre - 53-55 Harehills Avenue, Leeds, LS8 4EX

Accountable to: Touchstone Support Centre Manager and

Workplace Leeds Service Manager

Annual leave: 28 days, rising to 31 days after 2 years service

Pension: Touchstone operates a Money Purchase Occupational Pension Scheme and contributes 3% of your salary to this, provided that this is match by the employee

Probationary Period: All posts are subject to a six month probationary period.

Employment Basis: This post is for a fixed term period upto 31 October 2014

Job Description

Mental Health Employment Specialist

Introduction

WorkPlace Leeds was awarded funding in October 2011 (Initially for 3 years) by NHS Leeds to deliver a mental health employment service in Leeds. The consortium is a partnership between three voluntary sector providers in Leeds; Leeds Mind, Community Links and Touchstone. In addition, Leeds Mind also delivers an employment support service to individuals with mental health problems, funded by Leeds City Council Adult Social Care Service. As a consortium the roles are jointly employed by Leeds Mind, Touchstone and Community Links.

WorkPlace Leeds comprises Employment and Job Retention Specialist roles. The employment model involves working within the Individual Placement Support Approach and involves co-locating workers part-time within Leeds Partnership NHS Foundation Trust Community Mental Health teams, Touchstone Support Centre and Community Links Aspire service. The role employed by Community Links is specifically with young people.

Individuals may be required to move between roles, if required by the service.

Purpose of the post

To provide an employment support service to individuals who are accessing secondary mental health services, at Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust and IAPT services in Leeds with an emphasis of working with people from a diverse community.

Main Duties and Responsibilities

Employment Support

1.  Support a caseload of clients with mental health problems to get into/return to work, through an individual placement support approach and deliver ongoing employability support.

2.  Undertake induction, assessments, action planning and reviews with clients to help them achieve their employment goals and retain their jobs

3.  Work with clients on a 1:1 basis as well as deliver group work sessions, if required

4.  Support clients to undertake job preparation, work experience, work placements, volunteering, education, training and any other activity that helps them towards employment.

5.  Provide post-employment support to clients and employers.

6.  Continually evaluate the service being delivered to clients, employers and partners and other stakeholders

7.  Support a caseload of service users to retain employment.

8.  Work in partnership with employers in supporting clients to retain their jobs

9.  Work towards individual and team targets to achieve the specified outcomes of the service.

10.  To maintain accurate manual and computerised client, employer and stakeholder records, delivering reports and client stories.

11.  To actively engage with and support service users from the Black and Minority Ethnic communities to gain employment or to support them to participate in work preparation.

Employers

1.  Undertake a ‘champion’ work area with a focus on developing and maintaining job opportunities and relationships in a specific employment sector in Leeds e.g. health, hospitality

2.  Actively keep-up-to-date with the local labour market.

3.  Contribute to delivering mental health/job retention training to employers to increase their awareness of issues in relation to recruiting and retaining of employees with mental health difficulties

Partnerships/Marketing

1  To work closely with Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust, Leeds IAPT services and the Consortium member to promote and develop an integrated employment support service and promote the service to eligible clients.

2  To undertake a ‘Champion’ role in developing opportunities and awareness of a particular service outcome area e.g. education/training, self employment.

3  To network with and keep abreast of changes of agencies involved in mental health, employment, training and education around the city.

4  To market and promote the service to clients, employers, private, public and voluntary support agencies.

5  To attend community mental health team, Community Links Aspire or Touchstone Support Centre team meetings

Organisational

1.  To attend and participate in regular supervision with Workplace Leeds Employment Service Manager and Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust Supervisor and Touchstone Support Centre Manager.

2. To be inducted, performance monitored and appraised in line with the organisational performance management policies and procedures.

3. To attend and participate in team meetings

4.  To undertake out of hours and weekend work as required by service needs

5. To be responsible for personal learning and development where appropriate and undertake training, both mandatory and optional, to increase knowledge, skills and awareness in line with identified targets and objectives..

6. To adhere to Health and Safety procedures and to report any concerns to the relevant Manager.

7. To ensure compliance with the WorkPlace Leeds and the relevant partner agency policies and practices including Equal Opportunities

8. To ensure information is dealt with in accordance with policies around Confidentiality, Communications, Internet, Email and Telecommunications and steps are taken to ensure that confidential information is secure e.g. service user data.

9. To provide information about WorkPlace Leeds and the partner agency’s services to people/agencies with an interest in the organisation's work.

10. To undertake other tasks and responsibilities commensurate with the salary level of this post, as requested by the manager.

It is our policy to make reasonable adjustments to enable workers with disabilities to undertake the above tasks.

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